The Square Bistro — Restaurant in Northern Ireland

Have to say I have had a lot of sympathy for restaurants and hospitality in general. In fact when came to birthdays, Xmas etc.. I would have encouraged the purchase of gift vouchers to support the industry when reopens. However that support has somewhat waned tonight when I tried to make a reservation, to use one of those vouchers, for the Square Bistro in Lisburn. I made the booking using Facebook as suggested by their website. Booking made for 4 days’ time, made on Tuesday for Friday. Then email came ‘Action required to confirm booking’. I was being asked to provide my credit card details. Fair enough, however when I came to a link to add credit card details, I was asked to tick a box confirming I have read the terms and conditions. I tried this link but I was only offered to tick the box having confirmed reading the terms and conditions. Now, no-one should tick such a box unless they know what they are committing to. So I got in touch with the Square Bistro to ask them to forward a link for the terms and conditions. Their reply ‘The terms and conditions are that if you do not give us 24hours notice of cancellation £10 per person will be deducted from the card”. Now I thought this a bit excessive in that maybe 2-3 hours cancellation would be enough to charge fees and expressed this back to whom I believe is Stevie (the proprietor). His reply was take it or leave it and that ‘hundreds’ of other restaurants in Northern Ireland was using this same policy. This unless proven wrong I dispute. My wife and I eat out regularly at restaurants and I can say I have never had to provide credit card details and I would not agree to a 24hour cancellation policy that allows debits from a credit card for cancellation less than 24hours before the booking. So beware of the Square Bistro, Lisburn terms and conditions because they are not available when providing your card details and it does not get a mention on...

My wife and I went to the Bistro last night and we were impressed... initially. Our appetizer was good and the wine selection was decent. For the main course I ordered their Salmon special and my wife chased after the seafood pasta. Both tasted very good although the portions were quite small. Both the salmon and seafood pasta tasted very clean without any fishy aftertaste indicating the true freshness in the ingredients used. Based on the positives i have given so far, WHY THE LOW REVIEW? While I felt thr food was a bit overpriced based on the portion size, my main issue was the customer service. We had been in the restaurant for an hour and a half and had ordered an additional cocktail and were still working on our bottle of wine when the waitress told us that we needed to "hurry up" as the next table that had reservations had arrived. We had made reservation for an hour and a half earlier. We were only halfway through our bottle of wine! The waitress then came back after I had paid and informed me of the situation again asking for us to clear out. I was appalled! I have worked in restaurants before becoming a medical doctor and understand that making a customer feel rushed is a cardinal sin in the food industry. Frankly, Square Bistro doesn't seem to understand the intricacies of customer service and how doing a poor job can reflect on the restaurant as a whole. Portion sizes are the least of thus restaurant's problems right now. I will not be going back after this disappointing and...

We decided to go for an impromptu meal and as the bistro had been recommended us we thought it would be nice to try, when the door opened we were asked if we had a booking but we didn't so we were described as ‘a walkin’ by the women at the door she told us we could have a table but need to be gone by 6pm as it was booked we thought this would be ok until we were given menus and told we couldn't order duck, chicken or lamb as it was a 30 min wait, at this point we considered leaving as we felt our experience was being ruined, then being rushed to eat food at the prices being charged isn't acceptable we would rather have been told no at the door to be fair but decided to give it a chance. I would describe the food as ok nothing special my hubby ordered a medium steak which was too rare when it came out and i didn't really enjoy my food as i had to eat it at fast food pace but it was a fish pasta dish not really that much fish in it and to be fair when i was offered a dessert and then told in same breath what i could and couldn't order due to yes you guessed it time restraint i just thought just dont bother what’s the point. I think at £113 for fastfood we likely wont go back mainly on service the woman was quite sharp in her tone and also her manner and as soon as we finished our dinner the plates were swept away like you would expect in a greasy spoon. We were disappointed to say the least not a great experience especially as someone had...